Shortly after wrapping up his 2013 recruiting class, Todd Graham got away. The Arizona State football coach and his wife went to Cabo San Lucas for three days with friends. They also spent time in Las Vegas, catching Tim McGraw and Faith Hill in concert while there.

But now, with Graham’s second spring practice starting Tuesday, the coach is back home, back in his office with one thing on his mind.

“Back to work,” Graham said. “I don’t have time to be off too much. I’m ready to rock.”

Much has changed in 12 months. Last year at this time, the Sun Devils were just a few months removed from a messy coaching search. Graham, calling ASU his dream job, took a national beating for leaving Pittsburgh after one season.

Today the Sun Devils are coming off an eight-win season, one in which they defeated rival Arizona and throttled Navy in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl. Perhaps more impressive: One of the nation’s more-undisciplined teams became the least-penalized team in the Pac-12 after just one year.

By any measure that’s progress. But Graham isn’t satisfied.

“Even though you’re better and much improved and you don’t have those outward flaws that show, everything has to be renewed and improved,” Graham said. “That’s the challenge. When things are bad, it’s easy to improve. You win eight, that’s when it gets really hard.”

The Sun Devils have a lot returning. Offensively, junior quarterback Taylor Kelly is one of seven returning starters. Senior Marion Grice and sophomore D.J. Foster give ASU two threats in the backfield. Senior tight end Chris Coyle last season was among the nation’s best at his position, and the line has flexibility and depth.

Defensively, ASU returns eight starters, including All-American senior defensive tackle Will Sutton, last year’s Pac-12 Pat Tillman Defensive Player of the Year. Last season the Sun Devils ranked first nationally in tackles for a loss and second in sacks. They were third in passing defense. Graham wants to see improvement, especially in rush defense — ASU ranked 81st nationally — and forced fumbles.

But first, he said, the Sun Devils still need to learn what’s expected of a championship team.

“The reality is we have a long way to go in a short amount of time,” he said. “Let’s say we do as good as we did last year. You think about the discipline. Everything about our team I think was a lot better than it was the year before, so if we just do the same thing, we’ll win 10. We can’t do that. We have to win five more. We got to double down.”

Last year ASU’s motto was “All in.” This year it will be “Any challenge.” Graham said he still has players — returning starters — who think they can coast through off-season conditioning and bypass certain rules. Those players are learning the hard way. Last year, ASU’s approach to discipline was more coach to player. Graham wants the instruction to be more player to player, and the Sun Devils aren’t there yet.

“I’m not compromising. I’m not. Period,” Graham said. “I know what you have to do to win a championship. And what happens is, it gets easier to go, ‘Well, OK, we’ll back off this a little bit. We don’t need to do this anymore.’ But at the end of the day, that standard is the top 1 percent. ... And the better the player, the higher the standard, and because of that, a lot of our best players are uncomfortable.”

He said ASU will be pretty basic during spring practice, which runs through April 18. Aside from working on stopping the run, he expects to focus on the power-running game, an area in which ASU often struggled last season. The Sun Devils also will break in three new coaches: defensive-line coach Jackie Shipp, offensive-line coach Chris Thomsen and running-backs coach Bo Graham (his official hire should be announced soon).

“People think, ‘Ah, you came in and changed the culture,’ ” Graham said. “No. We’ve made strides. I’m proud of our players. We have great people here, but we still have a lot of work to do.”

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